TASK13: DETAILED ESSAY PLAN

"Are most black youngsters always represented as gangsters as in 'Get Rich Or Die Tryin' 20th january 2006(USA)"

For my independent study i am going to focus on and explain further wether black youngsters are always represented as gangsters and if they are always associated with crimes and drugs; in order to support my hypothesis i will use other texts which are silmilair to my text or have nearlly the same issues; which will be contemporary and historical texts.

i will also use book research that i have gathered and the internet research that i have posted on the blog and other research that i found.

My text is 50Cent "get rich or die tryin'"; is a gangster/action genre; so i will investigate further on the genre and also explain its conventions and show how my text is related to that genre and also use other gangster genre texts which are historical and see how the genre has changed throughout the years.

GENRES USED IN THE MOVIE:

• action
• crime
• gangster
• biopic
• music

Texts that i will focus on:

• Bullet Boy (2005)


• the God Father (1987)


• Scarface (1932)

those texts that i have chosen to look at have similair types of issueswhih my text also inclues and some also use black youngster.

representation:

i am mainly looking at how black youngsters are represented and if they are always represented as gangsters; so i have chosen Bullet Boy as one of the most important contemporary text that i will concentrate on; as it includes many actors that starred in 50cent and also young black boys which are seen as gangsters; which is very similair to my text; in addition to similair texts.

Theories that i will use:

• Propp_the hero and the villain: which is commonly used in the movie because when 50Cent is being tortued by other people; because he was the boss and those people are mainly his old friends and they turn against him because he gained the money and they wanted to kill him;which is shown in the movie when he was shot 9times and he wasn't killed; so that particular secene shows him as being the hero and his friends as being the villain.

propp theory is used mainly throughout the movie; because 50Cent had enemies throughot most of his life; when he was younger and his mother was killed he tried to do everything to find out who the murderer of his mother was and also when he grew up; he had his own enemies and people tried to kill him.

• Binary opposition which nearlly uses most of the conventions which i have mentionned in the hero and the villain theory.


• Todrov-non linear narrative: the movie starts with 50cent whne he was older and then goes back to his early years of life.

ISSUES AND TOPICS USED IN THE MOVIE:

• drugs; crimes; violence; etc...

these issues are usedin most of gangster texts and they areone of the main issues and conventions in a gangster movie.

Books that i will use:

• Strinati, Dominic (2000) : An introduction to studying Popular culture
• BLANDFORD, GRANT, HILLIER (Eds) Film Studies Dictionary
• COOK AND BERNINK: Cinema Book
• Sarita Malik (2002): representing black britain, black and Asian images on Telivision
• Pines Jim (1975): Blacks in film: a survey of racial themes and images in american film
• representing men, madness and mascunality in the media
• Robert Ferguson (1998): representing race

Websites:

• www.wikipedia.com
• http://northallertoncoll.org.uk/media/gangstergenre.html
• http://www.thesynergycentre.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=64
• http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime-victims/reducing-crime/youth-crime/
• http://www.helium.com/tm/398554/snowballs-chance-larry-semon
• http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/182.html
• www.imbd.com
  

TASK 12: HISTORICAL TEXT

For my historical text i decided to relate my text to the movie called the "god father" 1987;because i found out that there are many similarities in way that it is a gangster movie and it also includes drugs and crimes;etc...
it is a good text to refer to when writing my study because it is also named the number one gangster movie ever made.
The similarities between the two texts is that they both use the issues of crimes and drugs and they both have the same type of of genre which is the gangster genre; and also both of them use black actors and gangsters.
the differences is that this movie is based on a life of soldier who just came back from the second world war but needed money so he started getting involved into gangster groups and also started getting into drugs etc...
the texts show something in common is that both characters are in need of money so they both start getting involved into gangsters and crimes;in order to get money;and also the similarity is that both main characters seem to follow their family which were already involved into drugs and crimes etc...
for example Michael in God Father after coming back from the war finds that all his family is involved in the mafia, and 50Cent mother is involved in drugs and crimes and that she was being killed by a gangster.
The difference that these two movies is trying to show is that they are showing that the society has changed over the years; when this movie was filmed in 1987; there wasn't that much gangsters and crimes compared to our days now; but also on the other side we can see the progress at that time when 50cent was in his early years started to get involved in crimes and that was the period when God Father was shot and this shows that was the period that this gangster genre started to become really popular even if it was such as in the movie Shaft; but during that period of the 80s it was the period that the gangster genre became popular and the society started to face those problems such as drugs and crimes; which is also shown by mentioning being the n1 gangster movie and that is the reason that it became successful because it was the start of the gangster and crime period; and that what the movie 50cent shows when he was in his teenage years.
but it wasn't that popular and surprising when it was out in 2005; because there were already movies such as God father which really developed the genre and gave us a view of what was going to happen in the society during the 90 and 00 which started happening in 50cents movie and in the society.
THE GOD FATHER TRAILER

TASK 11:

Laura Mulvey is a succesful producer and director and producer, and has written and edited many books about the feminist theory adn how are females represented in movies.
she wrote many important books and essays and one of her important essayes is called 'visual pleasure and narative cinema', in this essay she used ideas of psychoanalytics Freud, where she reinterpreted his idea of Scopophilia, which is the pleasure of watching what shouldn't be watched.
Mulvey describes the women as a male gaze and that she is always represented as a gaze in movies,in order to attract males and that males are patriachal and rule the female.
she also uses the theory of Freud which is the 'anal stage' 'the oral stage' which are the two main concepts of the child development.
Then the Scopophilia concept which refers to the mature adult's desire to see things which we are forbidden to see and we're not supposed to be seeing.
The theory of the Male gaze which is the other concept that Mulvey exapnded on, that women are represented as 'objects' in films and they are always ruled by males and she also descibed the women 'to-be-looked-at-ness', that she should be looked at.In hollywood movies, the audience identfies with the male protagonuist in viewing the female.
the audience sees the female actress as a gaze or look. where laura mulvey described it as the voyeuristic where the women are there to be admired and not as a sex object, the Fetish where she is looked in a very sexual way.
How can it be related to my study?
it can be somehow related to my study, eventhough it is not the main the theory, because in the movie we see many scenes which represent the female as a sex object, as 50 Cent's mother where we see many males attracted to her, and the other scene when 50Cent is attracted by the female, his wife where again which might indicate that she is represented as a male gaze and also she is shown as supportive and a house-wife where she is caring for her husband and her child.
in this movie 50cent's wife can be seen from a voyeuristic point of view because she is not really represented as a sex object, however she is looking beautifull and not a sex obejct,but in the movie there are some sexual scenes where she can be seen as a fetish object.
50 Cent's mother is represented as a male gaze where she attracts males,and she is also represented as a 'femme fatale', and also there is a use of the 'Saddism' because she is being punished and being killed because she used to be involved in drugs etc...

Response to Interim Report:

My grade for media was D, i should have done better but i think my blog work and my research for my independent study is at a good level but still need to do more independently and not to rely on the tasks done in class, but i need to improve my writing skills mainly for module6, because i always got the same grade and always get the same feedback and i always try to improve and follow those feedback,but i think i have improved a bit as in my last mock i got better grade and hope to try more harder to improve my writing skills, and i think that is the main reason which is putting my grade down, and i will do my best to improve over the course of next term, which will also help me with my module1 retake.
My targets:
improve my writing skills with doing more practice.
do more research and start planning on how to write my study.

research on books:

what i found out...
Strinati, Dominic (2000) : An introduction to studying Popular culture. London: Routledge

that the gangster film is mainly associated with American gangsters.

1. was first laid out during the 30's.


2. the first gangster movies made are Little Caesar(1930), Public Enemy(1931) and Scarface(1932), still used as common examples of the Gangster Genre,and also seen as the classical movies of this particular genre.


3. The gangster film itself has subgenres and many features to be explored, such as the production of the movie, relation to hollywood and the studio system,the narrative and the ideology of the movie and how it is related to the "American Dream".


4. Gangster films are about Law, order and crime which are also features of the other genres such as crime or police genres, but this particular genre focuses on gangsters and their stories. (how and why they got into crimes, success as Gangsters, their lives, the power they had, etc...


5. Gangsters movies are usually aimed at a wider audience and a society in order to warn them from the crimes that are happening, throughout the character of the gangster.

The gangster film and the Hollywood system:

1. the Gangster film is the product of the growth of the Hollywood studio system.
2. "the ways in which the studios were organised to produce films can be seen as determining factors on the final pattern or form of the individual film" Ryall (1979:28), the Hollywood system has limits on the films being produced, however the gangster film has been shaped as the product of the Hollywood system.
3. according to Hollywood, the gangster film could combine realism and popular culture because it has been very popular throughout the years and more films have been made following this type of genre.

Ideology and the Gangster film:

1. Warshow (1964:84): the gangster is a product of the city and the gangster film is a the product of the imaginary city created by cinema "the real city produces only criminals but the imaginary city produces gangsters" which means that the gangster speaks out for the American people and rejects the qualities and the demand of modern life.
2. "the gangster is what we want to be and what we are afraid we may become." and this is expressed through the character of the gangster.

RESEARCH FROM THE FIRST MEETING:

Here are the following links that i found on the first three areas of research:
VIOLENCE:
the following link is from the guardian and has some true stories about the violence that is happening in britain, news stories which mainly include gun crimes, crime statistics which will be really useful for our studies. the quote used in this article is "The rise of knife and gun culture is about boys", this is related to both of our studies because it is about crimes and violence of boys.
the other link which is also related to violence is about parents complaining about the violence that is shown in movies and how children are affected by these movies, and that these movies are mainly watched by younger audiences, and also talks about how directors are using younger characters in order to appeal to younger audiences so they will watch those violent movies.
this link is about the differnt types of violence that is used in movies and againn relating to real life and how it is affecting other children and also includes some statistics.
this website is about violence and realism adn is investigating on a novel but explaining the issues of the violence genre.

PRIDE
the other issue that we decided to research on is Pride because both of our texts use this type of issue and how the characters are refusing to be humilated or bullied by other people, such as n my text 50Cent tries to do anything in order to revenge from the murder of his mother.
Definition of pride.

YOUTH CULTURE
The following article is about anti social behaviour( youth crime and gang culture) that is happening in Britain.
“ We have got to analyse what is going wrong here. Is it a general state of British society?The night London gangs brought murder to a club And I think it isn’t. It is about a specific problem within a specific criminal culture to do with guns and gangs."
Tony Blair
“ Surely no one imagines we can stop crimes like this simply with better policing or better gun control? The problem lies within families and communities — and so does the solution."
David Cameron
The other link is about what is causing the youth crime and what is the government doing against it.

2nd blog meeting with my blog buddy:

Me and Farah have decided to start researching on the following three areas, after our 2nd meeting:
Subcultures:
we decided to research on this topic because both of our texts have types of groups which comes under this category, which are black and white males.
Binary opposition:
both texts use this theory which is really important to both of our studies, that is the reason to investigate more on this theory in details.
Disaster movie:
This is used in both of our movies, which follows the Todorovian narrative (equilibrium,disequilibrium and new equilibrium) because in both texts there is something which is destroying the narrative and making that narrative non linear, so we decided to research on other disaster movies that we can quote when writing our studies.